Making money with alchemy
=Introduction= Alchemy, at least once you have reached a certain level of skill and acquired a few high-demand recipes, is a fairly good money-making venture (especially when combined with Herbalism). It certainly paid for my L40 mount quite easily. :-) Compared to other production professions (Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Leatherworking, Tailoring) goods you sell from Alchemy are, for the most part, consumable so your customers will keep coming back for more. Also there isn't anything that requires farming ridiculous amounts of rare materials. Even the highest-level recipes require only a few herbs per potion. Although some of the recipes are quite difficult or time-consuming to obtain and these will recipes will become your bread and butter. As with any economy the main way to make money involves supply and demand. Be prepared to spend top price for rare recipes and spend hours grinding reputation with several factions. If you have Herbalism as well as Alchemy, be sure to check how much you can just sell the raw materials for. For the common recipes you can often make more selling the herbs than you realistically could turning them into potions! Before making a ton of potions to sell, check prices and demand on your own server. Except for farming rare herbs, you should be able to make a profit from buying herbs from the Auction House and selling the finished product. If you cannot make a profit from doing this, then you need to find better recipes. =High Demand Products= Healing and Mana potions are constantly in demand, although you'll find more buyers for the higher-level versions. Stat-buffing Elixirs Especially the highest-level versions and the ones that buff multiple stats, such as Elixirs of Strength, Elixirs of Intellect, and Elixirs of Agility are usually good sellers. Note that the Intellect-buffing potions do not stack with Arcane Intellect and so are less useful than some of the other ones. Elixirs of Damage boost spell damage, like Arcane Elixir or Elixir of Firepower, and are also often in demand. Again, the higher-level versions will sell better, since higher-level characters have more disposable income. PvP Potions There are a number of potions that PvP players will constantly need. These include: Free Action Potion, Swiftness Potion, Living Action Potion, Stoneshield Potion, Purification Potion, Invisibility Potion, Limited Invulnerability Potion, and Rage Potion. Quests and Professions Some potions are needed for quests, or for other professions. Elixir of Defense are needed to make Toughened Leather Gloves (an excellent set of blue gloves); there is a quest that needs a Strong Troll's Blood Potion; Goblin Rocket Fuel is needed for a number of Engineering recipes; Ghost Dye is needed for a number of Tailoring recipes; Elixir of Shadow Power is needed for the Warlock epic mount quest. Swiftness Potion, in addition to their PvP demand, can be used to make Swift Boots and Deadly Bronze Poniard. Shadow Oil and Frost Oil are also used in various recipes or weapon enchants. Transmutation is also quite valuable, especially the Thorium->Arcanite transmute (since it is needed for so many other professions' top items, and it can be done only once per 48 hours per character with the skill). Mithril->Truesilver can produce some decent (but not spectacular) returns from level 20 until level 35. Raiding Potions The big money is in potions that are useful for high-level characters running endgame instances -- Greater Fire Protection Potions are in high demand for running MC, and new AQ content is driving up demand for Greater Nature Protection Potions. The outstanding buffs provided by the "Flask" recipes are also always in demand. However, these potions require very high Alchemy skill, and you cannot realistically farm the recipes or materials until you are up to at least level 50. -- Flask recipes also require a trip to the alchemy lab in Scholomance or Blackwing Lair. =Low Supply Products= Due to hard to get ingedients Herbalism will allow you to gather most of the materials yourself, Fishing is also useful). This works even at lower levels, there are a number of potions at the 225 skill level that are still useful to higher-level characters, but farming the ingredients for them is often a slow process, and a high-level character will gain little of value other than the herbs. Alchemy-related fish Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, Stonescale Eel are very valuable relative to the actual difficulty of getting them. If you have Herbalism profession as your other primary profession, consider farming Grave Moss. It is definatelly one of the rarest herbs of the game, as it is found in graveyards. Grave Moss is a key ingrediant for Shadow Oil and Greater Shadow Protection Potion. Due to hard to get recipes The potions made from recipes obtained from Zul'Gurub's Zandalar Tribe reputation sell quite well on the AH. =Random Tips= Keep an eye out in the AH for any Alchemy recipes selling for low amounts of money. This is less common than it used to be, but sometimes people will still sell recipes for FAR less than their true market value (since most of them have misleadingly low vendor sell values). *Most* lower-level recipes that are not trainable can be bought from a vendor in one of the cities (though some are limited supply, so you may have to camp the vendor for a while to get them). But others, like the Recipe: Swiftness Potion, are random drops and are very difficult to find. Consult Thottbot or another resource to check availability of recipes. Also keep an eye out for anybody selling herbs for low prices. Buy low and sell high, or hang onto ingredients for later recipes. They don't go bad. Make as many transmutions as possible, even if you have to spend your last money on materials. It is easier to sell them in stacks of 5 or more, because not everyone has the means to create them in 48h and you can avoid the hit-to-hit price of the competition who will get the price lower significantly to sell their product. Of course you can sell your transmution only, but will never get as much as transmuting for yourself and then selling. Category:Alchemy Category:Guides